The Use of Party Brand Labels in Congressional Election Campaigns

In spite of the centrality of partisanship to many theories of lawmaking, and the important role that party cues play in shaping voters' evaluations of political candidates, remarkably little is known about the circumstances under which congressional candidates use partisan symbols on the campaign trail. Employing data on candidates' televised advertisements over six elections (1998–2008), the present study explores the “supply side” of partisan cues and finds that candidates are strategic about their use of party symbols. And while personal and district‐level factors influence how candidates utilize partisan rhetoric, we show that the institutional context in which they campaign also matters.     

‘But this is a park’! The paradox of public space in a Buenos Aires ‘no man's land’

Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork, this paper analyzes the occupation of an abandoned park in the south of Buenos Aires by the city's urban poor, delineating the implications of this incident for notions of citizenship in the context of deeply fragmented social rights. While public space has historically been understood as an expression of the universality of rights bearing membership in a political community, I show how this universalism became the object of struggle during a conflict over the park between the local middle class and squatters, many of which were of immigrant origin. The discourses mobilized by various social groups blurred the distinction between citizenship as a set of legal–formal rights versus a project of normative inclusion. While public space is juridically constructed as universal, particularistic claims to these spaces are imbued with increased legitimacy in a context in which social rights – conceived as a set of provisions guaranteed by the state under a regime of liberal citizenship – are unrealizable. By claiming this space for particularistic uses, squatters drew attention to the contradictions embedded in public space's democratic pretensions in a setting in which putatively universal rights are ignored by the state.     

Contacting as a channel of Political Involvement: Collectively Motivated,Individually Enacted

Citizen-initiated contact with politicians is an increasing, but often neglected, form of political participation. Direct contact fits well with new participation trends that increased individualisation and a single-issue focus have brought forth, and is often interpreted as a participatory form that conforms with such new demands. Yet while political participation through most traditional channels is decreasing, direct-contact increase implies that people are still channelling involvement through the established institutions. Accordingly, this article argues that the significant increase in direct contacting of representatives is not an expression of protest behaviour. On the contrary, contacting shows strong adherence to representative democracy. It is related to conventional modes of political participation, above all party-related activities. This study examines contacting in relation to other forms of political involvement, using data from the Norwegian Citizenship Survey. The analyses reveal that even after removing from the analyses those who themselves hold public office, citizen-initiated contacting is related to party activity. Political ties are more important in explaining contacting than is the socio-economic status of the contactors.     

Several liability with sequential care: an experiment

European Journal of Law and Economics - By a laboratory experiment, we investigate the incentives of potential tortfeasors to make investments in order to reduce the probability of a given harm...